To convince Congress they deserve more funding, advocates of
government programs regularly highlight examples of all those
the program benefits. Reporters should look for the reality. For
touting the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) as if he were on staff,
CBS's Terence Smith earned the Janet Cooke Award. His April 28
Sunday Morning story focused on Legal Services of Greater
Miami: "They deal mostly with bread-and-butter issues: housing,
employment, custody, divorce. The concept of helping the poor
with their problems would seem, on the face of it, to be
something most Americans could agree upon. But Legal Services
is one of those hot-button issues that divides people on
political, practical, and ideological grounds." CBS did not present a
balanced slate of proponents and opponents, with 18 soundbites of
LSC backers and three from LSC opponent Rep. Charles Taylor
(R-N.C.), who revealed: "Many of the cases that I've seen are
very extreme, radical areas that are being funded by the
taxpayers...It is not the average elderly person being evicted
from homes that you would have people believe that you defend.
There's more of this radical view, I see, funded by the
taxpayer." Smith never allowed Taylor to elaborate. For
decades, the LSC has used its grants to fight against conservative
policies. As LSC chairman, Hillary Clinton funneled taxpayer money
into defeating a 1980 California ballot initiative (Proposition
9) to cut state income taxes in half. In 1983, the General
Accounting Office cited the LSC for violating statutory bars
against partisan activity. In 1994, The Washington Times
reported the state of California was forced by the LSC-funded
Western Center on Law and Poverty to revoke a 2.3 percent
reduction in welfare payments, costing an estimated $5.6 million a
month. They also filed successful suits to increase payments to
MediCal, the state's Medicaid plan, and force the state to pay
day been terminated by this particular time." 20 Smith moved
on: "Barbara Goulsby is the Legal Services attorney for Damon
Johnson, and 36 families who lost their possessions when Miami
police suddenly evicted them from their apartment building in a
drug-infested neighborhood. The city said the building was a
center for drug activity." To complete the picture of victims,
Smith added: "Daniel Barker, another Legal Services attorney,
is helping Deborah Williams fight eviction from her apartment...He
interceded with the public housing authority, which had accused her
of having unauthorized persons living in the apartment." Smith
asked Williams: "Where would you have been without Legal
Services?...On the street?" Williams agreed: "Yes, exactly,
okay?" CBS did not investigate whether LSC grantees use tax
dollars to fight the eviction of drug dealers from public
housing. The August 15, 1994 New York Times reported a group
representing 500,000 New York tenants entered a case to back
expedited eviction of drug dealers, only to be opposed by the Legal Aid
Society, an LSC grantee. (New York public housing officials
declared drug-related arrests in their complexes grew from 813
in 1973 to 11,092 in 1993). As Boehm testified to Congress: "A
program determined to use public funds to keep drug dealers in
public housing -- in the name of helping the poor -- is a
program that's lost what it means to help the poor." Smith
asked: "So what are the prospects for Legal Services, given the
current political climate?...Charles Taylor wants to kill the
program." Taylor declared: "We've been able to take it from $400 million
down to 283, right at the moment. We need to take it to zero."
Smith noted: "That won't happen this year. But last week
Congress imposed new restrictions on Legal Service attorneys,
barring them from bringing class-action suits, challenging
welfare reform, and representing many immigrants." Smith did
not explain why the new restrictions were necessary. Taylor's
press secretary, Jack Cox, told MediaWatch the CBS story
followed a formula: "Every single time we've done an interview,
the reporter finds one local group, interviews a few nice little fuzzy
cases where people say `I couldn't live without them,' and then
they quote us saying `Zero it out.' They never let us give the
justifications for zeroing it out. I sat in on the CBS
interview for more than an hour. [Taylor] must have hammered
home the drug-dealer issue about 40 times to get it into the
piece." It didn't get in. Smith told MediaWatch he stood by his
use of Taylor: "I would argue that's a very full description of
his view of Legal Services." As for the story's imbalance, Smith
declared, "Obviously, I think it was fair." When asked about
drug-related evictions, Smith protested that he was unfamiliar with
the New York case and insisted: "Taylor did not cite a single
specific case. When I asked attorneys in Florida, they said
they'd never represent a convicted drug pusher."

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